A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools / Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin

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24. AN ITALIAN LADY AS ST. AGATHA.

Sebastiano del Piombo (Venetian: 1485-1547). See 1.

The nimbus around the head indicates the saint; the palm branch and the pincers indicate St. Agatha, who was "bound and beaten with rods, and her tender bosom was cruelly torn with iron pincers; and as her blood flowed forth, she said, 'O thou tyrant! shamest thou not to treat me so—- thou who hast been nourished and fed from the breast of a mother?' And this was her only plaint." See also under 20.